Top 130 Quotes & Sayings by Rachel Cohn

I feel like there's so much darkness in all of my books.

No one would want to read a book in which I explain the science of cloning because it would be very dull and it would also make no sense.

Usually my characters, though young, tend to be street-wise.

I am a classic 'Star Trek' fanatic.

I am a classic Star Trek fanatic. When I was a kid, my mom and I used to go to conventions.

I've always been sort of a closet sci-fi geek.

When I was a teenager, the number one book I was most obsessed with was 'Gone with the Wind.'

Hope and belief. I'd always wanted hope, but never believed that I could have such an adventure on my own. That I could own it. And love it. But it happened.

There’s no such thing as ready,” she says. “There’s only willing.

How come princesses always have some huge flaw that can cause their downfall?

I feel like you may be a special and kind person. And I would like to make it my business to know special and kind people. Especially if they are boys my age.

Everyone on this island wants something kept quiet. I want to roar

I want to believe there is a somebody out there for me. I want to believe that I exist to be there for that somebody.

Books. I'd probably spend all my time alone and lost in books if I could. It's easier that way.

With what you were talking about before. The world being broken. Maybe it isn't that we're supposed to find the pieces and put them back together. Maybe we're the pieces." Nick says. "Maybe," Nick says, "what we're supposed to do is come together. That's how we stop the breaking.

From a distance, a clone's luminous eyes are meant to draw in humans and make them feel safe. Up close, the eyes appear hollow. Because of that, humans tend not to look into our eyes too closely, which I've been told is socially preferable, as eyes without souls behind them can be frightening.

I mean, I think I am basically a cool girl, but I am also a pain in the ass.

All this hoping for nothing-or someone-that's maybe hopeless

It's the great male fantasy-all it takes is one dance to know that she's the one. All it takes is the sound of her song from the tower, or a look at her sleeping face. And right away you know-this is the girl in your head, sleeping or dancing or singing in front of you. Yes, girls want princes, but boys want their princesses just as much.

I thought about the bigger picture of my life, and about the people—and particularly the guys—I would encounter during my lifetime. How would I ever know when that moment was right, when expectation met anticipation and formed … connection?

But she's not, and I am left to wonder on my own: How does this work, the getting to know a new guy without revealing too much desperation for his undivided attention?

What's better, I wonder - to be a toy for the humans, or to control your own destiny , even if the only way to do so is suicide?

This must be part of Mother Nature's master plan—making these boys so irresistibly cute, in such a naughty way, that the purity of their intentions becomes irrelevant.

There was no word in the dictionary adequate to describe the sensation other than sensational.

You know the reason The Beatles made it so big?...'I Wanna Hold Your Hand.' First single....brilliant. Perhaps the most...brilliant song ever written. Because they nailed it. That's what everyone wants. Not 24/7 hot wet sex. Not a marriage that lasts a hundred years. Not a Porsche...or a million-dollar crib. No. They wanna hold your hand. They have such a feeling that they can't hide. Every single successful song of the past fifty years can be traced back to 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand.' And every single successful love story has those unbearable and unbearably exciting moments of hand-holding.

Cinderella was such a dork. She left behind her glass slipper at the ball and then went right back to her step-monster's house. It seems to me she should have worn the glass slipper always, to make herself easier to find. I always hoped that after the prince found Cinderella and they rode away in their magnificent carriage, after a few miles she turned to him and said, "Could you drop me off down the road please? Now that I've finally escaped my life of horrific abuse, I'd like to see something of the world, you know?... I'll catch back up with you later, Prince, once I've found my own way.

I'm told there's no going back. So I'm choosing forward.

It's bullshit to think of friendship and romance as being different. They're not. They're just variations of the same love. Variations of the same desire to be close.

The reward is in the risk.

We believe in the wrong things. That's what frustrates me the most. Not the lack of belief, but the belief in the wrong things. You want meaning? Well, the meanings are out there. We're just so damn good at reading them wrong.

I wanted to talk to someone. But who? It’s moments like this, when you need someone the most, that your world seems smallest.

Teenage boys cannot be trusted. Their intentions are not pure.

No--when the rain falls you just let it fall and you grin like a madman and you dance with it, because if you can make yourself happy in the rain then you're doing pretty alright in life. (Nick, page 156)

The universe doesn't decide what's right or not right. You do.

That's because you're interpreting it the wrong way. I didn't mean it as a wistful, overdramatic declaration. I mean that the love I felt for him was huge and real, and, while painful, it forever changed me as a person, in the same way that being your brother reflects and changes how I evolve, and vice versa. The important people in our lives leave imprints. They may stay or go in the physical realm, but they are always there in your heart, because they helped form your heart. There's no getting over that.

It's a total lie to say there's only one person you're going to be with for the rest of your life. If you're lucky - and if you try really hard - there will always be more than one.

Drosophila,” I said, remembering the word. “What?” Lily asked. “Why do girls always fall for guys with the at ention span of drosophila?” “What?” “Fruit flies. Guys with the attention span of fruit flies.” “Because they’re hot?” “This,” I told her, “is not the time for being truthful.

Nick and I could become goodwill ambassadors for the city now that the porno shops on 42nd Street are gone. Must make mental note to contact mayor.

Bruises mapped my body from bumping into tables and tripping over curbs while walking with a book in my hand, my eyes focused on the pages instead of the live space around me.

Can we try to be wise with each other for a very long time?

But, you see, that's the luxury of being a lout - you get to be selective about when you care and when you don't. The rest of us get stuck when your care goes shallow.

When I was a teenager, the number one book I was most obsessed with was 'Gone with the Wind.

Because I withered under the glare of an actual invitation, I was a firm believer in preventive prevarication--in other words, lying early in order to free myself later on.

I've always resented Hermione, because I wanted to be her so badly and she never seemed to appreciate as much as I thought she should that she got be her. She got to live at Hogwarts and be friends with Harry and kiss Ron, which was supposed to happen to me.

In a field, I am the absence of field. In a crowd, I am the absence of crowd. In a dream, I am the absence of dream. But I don't want to live as an absence. I move to keep things whole. Because sometimes I feel drunk on positivity. Sometimes I feel amazement at the tangle of words and lives, and I want to be a part of that tangle.

When in doubt, ingest carbs.

The reward is in the risk. You can’t stay hidden inside Grandpa’s overprotective cloak forever. You’ve seemed like you needed to grow out of that for a while. Mom and Dad going away, and the red notebook, these things just helped. Now it’s up to you to

It's not the loving that hurts this girl; it's the understanding of it for what it is, that it will never be returned in the same way, that threatens to destroy her. But to unload the words - "I love you" - on an innocent party who didn't ask for it, to reach across the dark space and touch him - it's like the world she knows could end if she dared speak these words, dared make such a move.

Better to end this dream before it becomes a nightmare.

One of the failures of cellular communication is that tiredness often comes across as sadness.

We're better off. But I don't know if the world's better off. I don't know if the two are the same thing.

Why do you lie" I ask her. "To block the truth." Fair enough. Naomi goes on. "Where did we get it in our heads that we need truth all the time? Sometimes lies are nice, you know? You don't have to know the truth all the time. It's too exhausting.

What I’m sorry about is not being a tipsy idiot when you found me. I’m sorry about that, obviously, but more sorry that my stupidity caused us to lose a great opportunity. I don’t imagine you would have met me and fallen crazy in love with me, but I would like to think that if you’d had a chance to meet me under different circumstances, something just as nice could have happened. We could have become friends.

There is no such thing as a soulmate...and who would want there to be? I don't want half of a shared soul. I want my own damn soul.

Friendship is love as much as any romance. And like any love, it’s difficult and treacherous and confusing. But in the moment when your knees touch, there’s nothing else you could ever want.

The important people in our lives leave imprints. They may stay or go in the physical realm, but they are always there in your heart, because they helped form your heart. There's no getting over that.

We all just took the bookstore at its word, because if you couldn't trust a bookstore, what could you trust?

I don't know why I'm saying any of this, except that it's the truth." -Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

Dumped doesn't even begin to describe it. If you're going to use a trash metaphor, incinerated is more like it.

The humans create life, and senselessly cause death. For nothing.